Jailed: Thug from Newton Heath who knifed pal 10 times in drink and drug frenzy

A knifeman has been jailed after stabbing his friend ten times while high on drink and drugs. Stewart O’Dare came off worse in a row which erupted between him and Samuel McCarthy, 26, while the pair were socialising with friends at a house in Higher Blackley, Manchester. High on a cocktail of booze and cocaine, O’Dare then took a knife from a kitchen drawer and repeatedly plunged it into his friend’s body.

A knifeman has been jailed after stabbing his friend ten times while high on drink and drugs.

Stewart O’Dare came off worse in a row which erupted between him and Samuel McCarthy, 26, while the pair were socialising with friends at a house in Higher Blackley, Manchester. High on a cocktail of booze and cocaine, O’Dare then took a knife from a kitchen drawer and repeatedly plunged it into his friend’s body.

Manchester Crown Court heard that the victim could have been killed.

He was stabbed in the torso, leg and arm, with the blade missing his vital organs and major arteries.

O’Dare, 24, of Ten Acre Lane, Newton Heath, Manchester, later handed himself in to police.

He admitted wounding Mr McCarthy and has now been sentenced at Manchester Crown Court to five years behind bars.

O’Dare was said to feel deep regret at how things had got ‘horribly out of hand’.

His defence put his behaviour down to a ‘combination of explosive factors’.

The unemployed dad-of-two, who has a previous conviction for assault, is now said to be trying to better himself by taking courses since he was remanded in custody.

Judge Roger Thomas QC described the hard-drinking lifestyle O’Dare had been leading at the time of the attack as ‘pathetic’, but said he had hope for his future.

Jailing O’Dare, he told him: "What you have done here is armed yourself with a knife when things have gone wrong and in drink and drugs you used the knife with some gusto – ten separate stab wounds, some of which were really quite serious ones, and which on another day could have killed him.

"Once a knife goes through the upper skin who knows what it’s going to puncture in the body? Fortunately for you and him, he’s made a good recovery and the attack didn’t cause any really serious internal injury.

"You’re not an unintelligent young man, you’re trying to make something of your prison sentence, if you can do that over the next year or more you can come out and lead a decent life."